


one thing leads to another

by sonatine



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, but he's yuuri's mess, i absolutely believe that viktor is a very anxious person, two magnets searching for each other, viktor is a mess, viktor's loneliness, who hides behind his also genuinely boundless enthusiasm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 19:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9400037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonatine/pseuds/sonatine
Summary: Sometimes Viktor says he's going out but stays in. Sometimes Viktor says he's staying in to do laundry when he is 100% planning to try out that new bar the next block over.He doesn't know why he does this.





	

**2015**

“Where are you going now, Yuri?” Viktor asks, because practice is over and his brain can focus on other things like 1) the hole in his sleeve 2) the impressive gap in Yakov’s eyebrow that he does not want to know about and 3) chitchat with rinkmates.

“I’m going to try this new club,” Georgi announces, like nobody knows he’s just seen his ex check in there. “Seems cool.”

Viktor smiles politely and turns back to Yuri, who has just graduated from juniors. “How about you?”

Yuri gives him this look. The one you give to an adult when they ask how to print an email attachment.

“Seeing my grandpa,” he says. “It's Sunday. We’re making pierogi.”

This is the most Yuri has ever said to Viktor, and he seems to have exhausted his reserves. Viktor’s follow up questions are all met with irritable shrugs.

 

**2016**

Sometimes Viktor says he's going out but stays in. Sometimes Viktor says he's staying in to do laundry when he is 100% planning to try out that new bar the next block over.

He doesn't know why he does this. Maybe it's security. He lives for the grid, loves checking in and being tagged. But.

Yuuri left the onsen, clearly bothered by something, saying, “I'll be at the rink.”

Viktor looks for him everywhere, in all his favorite places. The beach, the boardwalk, that panini place in the grungy part of town, the hardware store where Yuuri buys polish for his equipment.

“I looked for you _everywhere_ ,” Viktor says petulantly when he finally finds Yuuri methodically practicing the salchow.

Yuuri gives him a look. Viktor blinks, thinking for a moment he's back in St. Petersburg and talking to small Yuri.

“I told you I'd be here,” Yuuri says. He adjusts his gloves. “But since you're here — when I step out at the end, I’m not sure —”

Yuuri chips away at a problem with the patience of a coal miner. Viktor usually bashes his head at an issue until it's cracked down the middle and he's tired to the bone. And then sleeps for twenty-four hours straight.

“Sure,” Viktor says, and walks Yuuri through the snarl in the yarn.

Yuuri watches intensely, carefully. He asks Viktor to repeat himself four times.

Viktor never minds.

 

**2014**

It's Easter Sunday and St. Petersburg is deserted. Viktor woke up early, because his body is cruel, and tried three of his favorite coffee shops and finally slunk to the Starbucks when he was roundly taunted with closed signs.

The place is packed with tourists and Viktor drinks his concoction in grim dignity. He pretends not to speak English to the five people that all ask directions to the Kremlin. He leaves with his drink only half-finished, his paper only half-read.

Sometimes you never know your dad, as it happens, and sometimes your mom dies when you're twenty-one, as it happens.

You're legally an adult, so you get an apartment with the sponsorship money. You train at the same rink, with the same coach, and your life still revolves around the same neighborhood, so it's not _so_ different is it?

Viktor passes by a couple holding hands, two slim guys, laughing quietly about something on a phone. The one guy looks a little like Chris Giacometti and Viktor has an idea for a step sequence that would definitely inch him up a couple tenths of a point.

He makes some good progress at the rink that afternoon and rewards himself with a bubble bath that floods the bathroom in glitter, like he's Oberon incarnate.

He wakes up later from a dream, something about hands and gold at 4am and can't fall back asleep.

But the sky is streaked a pretty pink, like Makkachin’s tongue, and he runs to the rink. The ice smells welcoming.

 

**2017**

Viktor comes home to his apartment in St. Petersburg.

He passes by the cafe where he first convinced his mom to give him skating lessons, when he was four.

(His mother, who was an engineer for their country — now it was called Russia again, not that it made a difference to whether Viktor could watch more cartoons in the morning — stared at him with her mathematical brain and said, “For what purpose?”

“Any purpose,” said Viktor. She signed him up, provisionally.)

Viktor unlocks his front door with the usual elaborate ballet of wrist turns and shoulder slamming, and sets the groceries on the floor.

“Please,” says Yuuri, from the kitchen. “Please let me replace that lock.”

Viktor abandons the bags to kiss Yuuri instead until he's blushing and forgotten his cereal.

“I like that lock. It has character.”

“It's difficult,” Yuuri says, exasperated and fond. His hands are resting on Viktor’s hips, like they belong there, and Viktor feels —

“I too am difficult,” Viktor says.

Yuuri rolls his eyes but humors him. “I'm going for a run before going to the rink. You want to come?”

Viktor rests his head on top of Yuuri’s. He lets himself listen to Yuuri’s steady breathing for a minute and kisses the top of his head.

“Yes! Let's run by the river.”

“Sure,” Yuuri says.

 

**2012**

Viktor is in Canada or Shanghai or maybe Johannesburg, he can't really remember right now, but he's wedged into a taxi beside Chris, who is expounding on the virtues of some new blade. Viktor smiles, not attending, and stares at the lights outside the car window.

They don't hook up that night, but instead play Gin Rummy and дурак in Chris’ hotel room. Then Chris brings out an actual travel backgammon set from his suitcase.

“This game is so boring,” Viktor tells him, still a little drunk.

They're speaking English, the common tongue of all competitors, though sometimes Viktor can persuade Chris to let him practice his French.

Chris just smiles and shrugs, sheepish over the wire-frame glasses he wears at night. Viktor is a little bored and a little tired, but that's okay. The backgammon passes the time.

 

**2016**

Viktor has an anxiety attack on the plane, in the tiny Hasetsu airport with a smattering of gates, in the uber ride over, and while explaining to the kind but baffled middle-aged Japanese couple what Viktor and his ten billion suitcases are doing on their front porch.

He has another one while soaking in the spring, though it's probably just a continuation of the slow long quarter-life crisis he's been having since his thumb pressed the ‘call’ button under YAKOV and his mouth said, “I’m going to Japan to coach Yuuri Katsuki," and then the only father figure he has ever known said, “Don't expect to come crawling back."

He rests his head on the rocks behind him and dreams of a time when things — anything — felt fine.

But you can't expect to get a different result from doing the same thing, his mom would have said. _Something_ has to change.

The sliding door to the main building rockets open. Viktor thinks the door actually might derail off its tracks, but he's distracted by the sweaty, gasping vision of Yuuri Katsuki, in glasses and workout gear, standing above him.

They gape at each other for a minute. Viktor is naked and flushed and not breathing correctly, but Yuuri is at least two of those things too.

“What are you doing here?” Yuuri asks.

He doesn't pretend not to know Viktor, like the day after the banquet. And it's the undertone of desperate hope that bolsters Viktor’s confidence.

Maybe two negatives can make a positive.

 

**2016**

It's after the adrenaline crash and flashing lights have faded, and Viktor and Yuuri are alone, in their hotel room, showered and in sweats, perched on the pushed-together beds that Viktor feels an attack coming on again. He hasn't had one in so long.

Yuuri nudges Viktor’s leg with his foot. There is a hole in the heel of his sock.

“So,” Yuuri says. “Next season.”

Viktor loves him like this, hair still damp around the edges, relaxed and serious. He loves goofy Yuuri too, but this is the calm version Yuuri never really trusts anyone else to see.

“Yeah,” says Viktor.

He misses skating like a missing limb, but he forgot the other side of the coin.

“You scared shitless?” says Yuuri.

An undignified snort bursts from Viktor.

_“Obviously,”_ he says.

Yuuri scoots in, so that he's wedged snug into Viktor’s side, and pulls out his phone.

“You already have a PS3,” Viktor says as Yuuri sends a message to the craigslist user.

“Yeah, but I doubt your apartment does,” says Yuuri. “Unless you wanted to get a new place together?”

“After all the work I put into decorating?” Viktor says indignantly.

Yuuri kisses Viktor’s neck, just at the juncture of his jaw, tender and unhurried, with a casual possessiveness Viktor never thought he’d know.

Viktor shivers and leans in.

Yuuri’s lips move up the side of Viktor’s face. Viktor can feel them curve into a smile.

“You know,” Yuuri murmurs, hand warm against Viktor’s side, “this grey hoodie blends in exactly with your hair.”

“This is _heather_ ,” Viktor tells him, and tugs the edges of Yuuri’s hair — just becoming long enough for a ponytail.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this on the train to and from work while an older gentleman looked over my shoulder
> 
> [tumblr link](http://sonatine.tumblr.com/post/156130904059/2015-where-are-you-going-now-yuri-viktor-asks)


End file.
